Network Rail has confirmed that staff were changing sleepers, testing the rails and regulating the ballasts, which could have been responsible for the noises.

I wouldn’t have characterized it as “bad guitar feedback” but it does sound like metal (the solid kind, not the music).

We hear MANY stories of strange sounds. Many people notice them at night when the urban activity has died down. Industrial activity accounts for many of these events. But it can be difficult to trace them especially if they are one time events such as maintenance.

Buzz about a mystery hum that’s confounded researchers and those who hear it has extended well beyond a Calgary neighbourhood where complainants first came forward.

Victims of the so-called “Ranchlands hum” describe it as more of a vibrational feeling than a noise. It has the power to keep them up at night, ruin their mood and has even led some poor souls to question their sanity.

The hum is a “genuine phenomenon,” according to University of Calgary researcher Dr. Marcia Epstein, who’s worked in her spare time to track the elusive source for a few years.

Her theory (I would call it a hypothesis because she has no evidence for it, it appears) is that the urban environment creates such sounds and our brains pick up the electromagnetic frequencies. This is testable. Get to it. Whatever the cause, it’s a logically leap off a cliff to say it’s caused by something paranormal or by aliens or earth signals or whatever the conspiracy du jour is. If it can be measured, we can probably get to the bottom of this.